Happenings

I am now living in Daejeon, South Korea! I teach English to elementary and middle school kiddos in a rural town called Yeongdong, commuting 1 hour each way.

Today marks the end of my first month in South Korea. What have I learned? Let me share my findings.

Korea is cold. Really, really cold. It's snowed a fair bit, but the daily temperatures are the far bigger annoyance of winter. Sand or salts aren't used to melt ice on walkways, so sidewalks can sometimes be coated in a half-inch bed of pure ice for blocks.

Korean drivers park wherever they damn well please. In the middle of a designated crosswalk? Yep. Right in the middle of a crowded sidewalk? Uh-huh. In the middle of the street, making a 2-lane road into a 1-lane traffic jammer? Yessir, you better believe it. Korea should look into something called a traffic warden. If they knew they could be driving these neat little things around, I'm sure they wouldn't hesitate (Korea loves cute little gadgets).

Korean food is freaking awesome. It's cheap, delicious, seemingly healthy, and almost always at least a little spicy. I've enjoyed just about every bite of every type of food I've had here (yes, even the doenjang jigae, the smelly soybean soup). Korean beer I've slowly come to accept, even with its inadequacies. Most are weak lagers like Budweiser or Coors. In fact, Bud is a pricey import that's pretty easy to find here. You can find some Euro beer when you go to bars, but I haven't seen a single American craft ale. In Edinburgh, I could find Sierra Nevada Pale Ale (and of course the Scottish 'American-style' Brew Dog Brewery). I'm hoping to eventually become that lucky here, too.

Koreans are very fashion-conscious. It seems like they spend a lot of time and money buying the newest fashions. Even the elderly are usually dressed up in nice digs like they pay attention to the latest trends. However, I've noticed everyone dresses very much the same. Nike or New Balance sneakers, skinny jeans, puffy down jacket, and thick rimmed glasses seem to be standard attire here. It's like the Pacific Northwest is sending them fashion advice from across the Pacific. North Face is huge here, too, as are many other outdoorsy brands. There doesn't seem to be many "styles" of dress like the United States -- preppy, indie, punk, jock, gangster, etc., but that could just be a sign of my ignorance of Korean fashion trends. Looking at fashion seems like a superficial way of exploring a culture, but I promise it isn't as shallow as you might first think. Many values can be represented via clothing. It's symbolic of how a person wishes to imagine themselves from the outside, how they want to be perceived, which directly evidences their mental life. It shows how they relate to others, how they feel about themselves, which social groups they identify with, how they feel about the past and future, their socioeconomic status, and many other items regarding an individuals psychological and social lives. It's something I'll keep thinking about as I weave my way through public spaces, surrounded by Korean people decked out in Korean fashion.

Yes, it is indeed cheap to live in Korea, if you go about it the right way. After first arriving in Korea, I gravitated to the 7-11 and McDonalds like a gnat to a lightbulb, captivated by its non-Korean characters and familiar qualities. These are not the places where cheap living happens. In recent weeks, I've found Korean grocery stores that sell cheap Korean food (as well as expensive American items... bad, Will) and I've taken advantage of the free food and drinks that my work offers every day. Yes, it means navigating the rough seas of the language barrier, staring blankly whenever a kind Korean person tries to help, but it's all for the betterment of my experience here.

The Korean language has proven to be both easy and very difficult to learn at the same time. It's a bit mysterious to me, actually. The easy part was hard, and the hard part was easy. I learned the hangul alphabet in about two hours of study with a flash card software on my phone, when I expected that process to take weeks. The teacher I replaced never learned the alphabet in his year living here, so I was expecting to start a heck of a endeavor... and two hours later I was finished. That part was easy. The easy part that was hard for me, was to learn the first few basic words. "Thank you" in Korean is kamsahamnida ("kahm-sahm-nee-da"). It took me about a week to learn this one word. Kamsa... kamsaham... kamsahamnodo? Kamsihadmida? There were no phonetic or morphemic references for me to go off of, so it was starting from absolute zero. Most foreign languages Americans learn are related to English in some way by being both based in the latin family of languages. Even Japanese seemed easier to learn because all the Japanese syllables are easily recognized and pronounceable to English speakers. "Do-mo a-ri-ga-to" is thank you in Japanese. That one was even made into a catchy tune about being extra appreciative of our mechanical friend, Mr. Robot. Thanks to Styx, that Japanese phrase is part of collective cultural consciousness and found its way into our recognizable phonemes. I think someone needs to step it up to help out all our future ex-pats in Korea by making the hit song Kamsamnida Cheesy Velveeta (I think several people in my family that would appreciate this song idea). Anyway, I continue to progress in my Korean, very slowly, but steadily.

On a work related note, it has come to my attention that some children that reside in rural areas are as wild as the animals that stalk the forested hills overlooking my school. There are a few that seem outright indignant that I exist at all, so they see my attempts to instruct them in English and assign them homework as audacious and enraging. There have been a few open rebellions in my classes so far, but I'm learning how to quell them quickly by shouting at the top of my lungs "HAJIMA!" (STOP THAT!) and slamming a book down on the desk. William Teacher is a revolution that Korea is constructing. I will return to the USA next year a much more assertive and decisive person.

I've also learned the hard way sick days don't really exist in tiny rural private academies. You don't miss your classes unless there's an absolute emergency. If you do, all the other teachers have to double up and crowd their tiny classrooms, make extra lessons from the ground up to accommodate multiple speaking levels, and put their term syllabus on hold. One Korean teacher missed a day of work due to the death of a parent (very sad), and I had one of the absolute worst teaching days of the past month. It was chaotic, sloppy, and exhausting. So even though I had a terrible cold this week, I fought my way through the fever, light headedness, phlegmy cough, loss of voice, and constant runny nose to prevent the rest of my school from being turned upside down. I'm going to be a little more vigilant about my health from here on out.

On a more lighthearted note, I live in a crazy part of town filled with neon lights, street food vendors, arcades, bars, cheap restaurants, fashionable kids with colored hair, public markets, and a kick-butt 5-story stationary store with all of the coolest things. Sometimes I resent my 'hood for being so goofy and weird, but I think it suits me pretty well. I'm slowly coming to embrace the neon-zoo I live within.

I could go on and on, but this is where I'll stop. It's been an eye-opening month, that's to be sure, but the learning won't stop here. Maybe a month from now I'll look back and tell you how little I really knew. That would be a good thing. Progress.

Until then, take care.